14 Final Words To Folks Captivated by Fake News!

by on April 15, 2018
➡ Average Reading Time: 4 minutes

Read Me First | Read Me Second | Read Me Third

Final Words To Folks Captivated by Fake News!

Final Words to Folks Captivated by Fake News!Jude pens his final words to his friends who have been assaulted by the FakeNews! purveyors.

In the opening words of his letter, he greeted his readers (Jude 1-2). He told them that he was going to write them some thoughts about their common salvation, but he found it necessary to write to them to contend for the faith. There were some people who had slipped into the church and began teachings centered around denying Jesus and practicing immorality. He gave them many examples of why they should contend for the faith (Jude 5-16).

In the second part of his letter, (Jude 17-25) he devotes his attention to helping his readers understand how they can contend for the faith in their lives and the life of their community of faith. He concludes his letter with one of the most potent doxologies in the whole New Testament. In a burst of praise and adoration to God, Jude let his readers know that they were safe in the hands of the creator of the world.

Final Words Jude 24-25

To him who—Contrary to the apostates, who had fallen and were teaching others to fall, God was able to keep his children from falling and is able—the word translated able denotes an inherent strength to do what is necessary to produce positive results. The positive result was to keep you from falling, which means to provide safety when assaulted from an outside source. Falling is actually stumbling. The word was often used to ascribe a sure-footed horse and a man who would not fall into error. God guards in this life in spite of the dangers and pitfalls, which the enemy sets before us. We are secure in him.

And to present you before his glorious presence. We will one day be ushered into the presence of God. Because of the keeping power of God, when that time comes, we will be presented without fault. This is a sacrificial term. It means to be without blemish. It is used of the animals who were presented to God as a sacrifice. We shall be spotless in the eyes of God. For the reader who was faced with the possibility of certain destruction if he followed the Fake News! teachers and their teaching, this was great news and a tremendous assurance. God had the power to present them without a spot.

And with great joy—When one has fought a good fight and has kept the faith, there will be great joy when he or she arrives on the other side.

Jude breaks into a crescendo of praise with: To the only God, our Savior be glory, majesty, power, and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

He gives thanks to the only God as opposed to the many gods the Fake News!  teachers were willing to follow. This is one of several places (John 20.28; Rom. 9.5; 1 John 5.20) where Jesus is referred to as God. The Westerner looks for direct statements in Scripture that say that Jesus is God. However, Jesus most often acts like God instead of saying with words that he was God.

He says that God should receive:

Glory. This is the essence of the character of God. The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory (Heb. 1.3). The doza of God is his brilliance in the world.

Majesty. The word translated majesty here occurs only three times in the New Testament. In each occurrence, the authors ascribe this quality to God. It means greatness that has no limits or bounds. By using it, Jude is suggesting the splendor of God to his readers. How much more he is than the Fake News! teachers and their earthly lusts.

Power. Here we see God as the creator. Certainly, if he created the world, he can protect us from the traps of the enemy. This was surely in Jude’s mind. We talk much about the power of God to do miracles in our lives. The greatest miracle done by his power was bringing us to know his son and forgiving us of our sins and giving us eternal life. He has given us the presence of the Holy Spirit to empower us in every aspect of our life. We need his power on a daily basis to help us contend for the faith. It takes his power to keep us from sin, just like it takes his power to heal us of our physical, social, financial, and spiritual ills.

Authority. For Jude, God had the liberty to act in an unrestrained way to bring justice to the world. This is the sovereign God who has everything in control. Nothing escapes his attention.

Concluding Words

My hope for you as a reader of Scripture is that you will continue your thirst for the understanding and practice of Scripture. Let me leave you with a well-worn illustration. If you went to a class on parachuting and read all the homework assignments and passed all the written tests, would you be qualified to call yourself a parachutist? Not really! The one important thing, which you did not complete, was jumping out of the plane. To know the material only makes you smarter. To do the material makes you wiser and less venerable to error. I encourage you to put to work what Jude has suggested in your lives: think; build; pray; keep; wait; be merciful; snatch and save, and show mercy.
If you do these things in your life, you become a doer of the word and not a hearer only. Blessings on you from our great and glorious God.

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Read Me First

 

Throughout these sessions, I have used the word ecclesia (singular) for the usual word church and ecclesiae (plural) to indicate a church in a particular geographic place, i.e., the ecclesiae at Corinth, meaning the whole of the many smaller ecclesia that met in homes in Corinth. This is to distinguish between the Institutional Church model (IC) and ecclesia that meet in cities and towns around the world. The ecclesiae written about by the authors of the Second Testament were not the same as what the “church” has become over the years of its existence. Usually, but not always, folks think of a church as a place where they go to a building and set in rows of pews and listen to music and sometimes sing and listen to sermons by a pastor or senior pastor. The ecclesiae of the Second Testament time did not invoke this model.

 

I have discovered over the years that if you want to try and change minds about something special, you have to venture out and reword it in order to grasp a foothold for a new refreshed understanding of the idea presented by the word. Such is the case between "church" and "ecclesia."

 

Happy Reading!

Read Me Second

 

Referenced verses in the text of this study are not used to prove some point of view. They are merely markers where the subject matter is referenced by other books and authors. To gain a larger view of each quote, a serious student of the Holy Writ would take the time to view the reference and see what the background is. The background provides tracks on which the meaning of a text rides. So knowing the context of a referenced passage would help the reader to gain a more thorough understanding of an author than just the words quoted and marked by a verse number that was not a part of the original author's text, which as you might remember was performed on the text in a random fashion many years later.

 

Happy Reading!

Read Me Third

 

The verses that are referenced in these sessions are not meant to prove a point. They are simply pointers to where the idea being written about may have a correlation. In order to see if they accomplish the thesis presented by the original author, a student should read, at a minimum, the chapter in which the verse is found as well as trying to ascertain what the original author may have meant to say to the original audience.

 

Of course, this is a lot of work but it is beneficial work. If one does not understand what the author meant when it was written and the audience could not have understood by what was written, then the words on the page can mean anything that a present reader may assign as a meaning, thus distorting what God was inspiring for the original writer to write to the original audience to hear.

A great and recent book by N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird entitled The New Testament in Its World would be a wonderful addition to your reading helps.

 

Happy Reading!

Jesus Followers

 

There are many synonyms to use for the word believer, which is the most common word for a person who has "converted" to follow Jesus. I have chosen "Jesus follower(s) or follower(s) of Jesus instead of the word believer in these presentations to allow the reader an opportunity to move away from the idea of believer which conjures up the possible thought of "ascent" to a set of doctrines that have been assembled by different groups over the centuries and show up in this day and age as a set of statements posted on web sites and other written material. These sets of beliefs are suggested by many as the ones that one should ascent to so that upon death the one who assents can go to heaven, i.e., just believe and you are good to go. Jesus followers/followers of Jesus suggest an action that one should take. Remember, Jesus told his disciples to follow him. Yes, belief is important, but one must move beyond belief to action.

 

(See "Discipleship" Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. 182-188.)